How long did the Mount Isa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2024 and 17 October 2024: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,300 hectares (73.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mount Isa (7,314 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AU · Australia · 2024-10-12 → 2024-10-17

Mount Isa fire, 12 October 2024 Mount Isa

Out · last detection 18 Oct 2024, 04:11 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2024 in Mount Isa, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,300 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1112th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 390 in Australia in 2024, of 638.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mount Isa · 2016 Mount Isa · 2022 Mount Isa · 2024 Mount Isa · 2016

Burnt area: 7,300ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 12 Oct 2024 – 17 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 12 Oct; 2024
Heat detections: 284; in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start: 71; Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 630MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct17 Oct

Play back 18 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 14 Oct 15 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,477 ha in 2016, 165 ha in 2017, 1,627 ha in 2019, 249 ha in 2020, 118 ha in 2021, 2,782 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,438 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Mount Isa where it started

7,314 ha reached on 13 Oct

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
12 Oct	37.1 °C	18 %	51 km/h	0.3 mm	Very extreme 71
13 Oct	34.6 °C	23 %	49 km/h	0.5 mm	Extreme 54
14 Oct	36.7 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Oct	37.5 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
16 Oct	38.9 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Oct	38.5 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
18 Oct after	38.5 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Oct after	36.3 °C	30 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Oct after	39.3 °C	15 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
21 Oct after	39.6 °C	7 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 69
22 Oct after	40.6 °C	9 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 73
23 Oct after	40.6 °C	18 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 70
24 Oct after	42.1 °C	5 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 84
25 Oct after	38.0 °C	7 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 82
26 Oct after	38.3 °C	6 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 74
27 Oct after	38.4 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
28 Oct after	39.7 °C	11 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 5 Oct 2024

After · 24 Oct 2024

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 97 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak97 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM10142 µg/m³

Optical depth2.11

WHO 15

1011121314151617181920

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 284Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mount Isa fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2024 and 17 October 2024: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,300 hectares (73.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mount Isa (7,314 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

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What really happened?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 000.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 284 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned